


Won't Somebody Please Think of the Bees?

by Laelior



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Skyhold, beeeeees, fluffy fluff fluff, kinda weird tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 03:46:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11096229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laelior/pseuds/Laelior
Summary: The bees are sad.They remember being warm and having full fields of flowers just for them. The remember other bees. They remember green and yellow, and there’s too much blue and white here for them. It makes them dizzy. They don’t like the cold, and the garden’s few flowers, being the only hive in Skyhold. They stay in their hive most of the time, remembering the warmth and the flowers and the green but forgetting to be bees.Cole settles into Skyhold and tries to help everyone, even the bees.





	Won't Somebody Please Think of the Bees?

The bees are sad.

They remember being warm and having full fields of flowers just for them. The remember other bees. They remember green and yellow, and there’s too much blue and white here for them. It makes them dizzy. They don’t like the cold, and the garden’s few flowers, being the only hive in Skyhold. They stay in their hive most of the time, remembering the warmth and the flowers and the green but forgetting to be bees.

They remember how to be bees when the boy from the stables throws rocks at their hive. They remember yellow and red and they get angry. They fly, free and furious, flinging their fragile bodies at anyone who gets near enough. They remember they can sting. But I make them forget, just for a little bit, so they don’t hurt anyone.

Jason, the boy from the stables, he doesn’t like it when the bees don’t get angry. He wants them to hurt people like he’s hurting. His mother was at Haven. Everyone tells him she’ll be back soon, but he knows she won’t. It’s been weeks and weeks and she hasn’t come to Skyhold. He’s angry that they’re lying to him. I can make the hurt better, but it won’t help him. I’ve learned that now. Sometimes taking away a pain is like taking away a splinter. It can help, or it can fester and get worse.

I don’t want to make it worse.

Elan, the herbalist who tends the garden, she wants to help, too. Mostly. She can be sharp. A scalpel. But her thoughts are softer today. She wants a messenger, someone to ask Cabot the bartender if he needs any herbs from the garden. The bees want Jason to leave the garden. I come up behind Elan and lightly touch her shoulder. She doesn’t even see me.

“The stable boy needs something to do. He can take your message,” I say to Elan.

“Did someone say something?” She looks around, confused but not alarmed. I haven’t frightened her. I’m getting better.

Her eyes focus on Jason, who’s picked up another rock and about to throw it. She snaps her fingers at him before he can. It’s a sharp sound that echoes through the garden. He looks over at her and puts the rock down. Waves of guilt at being caught come off of him. But he wants someone to catch him and reprimand him, even though he doesn’t know it. He wants someone to yell. Yelling is better than lying.

“You, boy. I need you to take a message to the tavern. I’ll throw in a copper if you make it quick,” she says sharply.

“A copper?” Jason’s eyes light up with the promise. A copper can buy him a sweet treat from the kitchens. The sweet treats make him happy, make him forget to be angry for a while.

He runs to the tavern with Elan’s message.

The bees don’t need me anymore. On my way out of the garden, I pass by Shella, Elan’s assistant in the garden, carrying a sack of flower seeds. She’s in a hurry, her mind is buzzing with thoughts of a scout named Jim. A string hangs loose from the bottom of the sack. I pull on it as she goes past me, and seeds skitter, scatter, spread over the ground.

“Look what you’ve done, you clumsy fool! We’ll never be able to pick all of these up.” Elan is sharp again. But she’ll be softer when she gets a message back from Cabot. Jason will be quick. He wants that copper.

The tavern is noisy when I return. Jason is already racing back to the gardens, fast and fleet of foot. He carries a note in his hand. Scrunched, scribbled swiftly, sent back to sender. Messages that say little on the surface but tell a whole story to Elan and Cabot.

I go up the stairs, past Sera’s room, quickly and quietly. She is red today. She’s sharp and barbed, like her arrows. But the arrows have two ends—they hurt her, too. She’s scared and angry because a dragon attacked at Haven. She doesn’t like dragons. They make her feel little, helpless.

_Hiding in a closet, hearing the Darkspawn grunt and fight down the street outside. The screams of the people who try to run catch in her ears. Why don’t they hide?  But then the ground shakes and the air splits with a roar. The Archdemon. Never believed in it before. Thought it was something Lady Taraline made up for scares. But it’s here and loud and Denerim will burn to ground and no one will remember the little elf girl hiding in the closet._

She thinks I’m a demon. She doesn’t understand.

I’m not a demon.

I’m _not_.

The top of the tavern is quiet but noisy.

— _wasn’t_ really _my fault, Tama, Sataari really went horns first into the whole thing_ —

— _her songs? No, compliment her lute. She’ll like that. Maybe_ —

— _three barrels of Ferelden ale, five casks of Orlesian wines, four bottles of Marcher whiskey. Cheaper to buy than brew. Costs too much to bring enough wheat for mash. Ask Elan to grow hops anyway_ —

— _quiet and still, what can you see from the top of the hill. Fuck that song, stuck in my head again. Why can’t it leave me alone?_ —

I can hear all the thoughts and feelings coming from below but it’s not too loud. I like it this way. I don’t remember from the time before I became Cole, but this might have been what it was like—hearing, listening, and whispering back, but quietly. Like a bee collecting pollen. It feels real.

Skyhold is stone and mortar and wood. It’s not real. The wood sometimes dreams of when it was a tree, growing green and graceful under the sun, and the stone still hears echoes of an old song, but the parts don’t make a whole. It’s not real. It doesn’t sing or grow or feel. Not anymore.

The people in it are real. They think and feel and remember and dream.

I might even be real.

Solas says I am, but I don’t know what that means. He says I will one day.

Pain pulls me from my place in the tavern. Pain that’s sharp, steel, sadness.

A kitchen maid, delivering fresh, fragrant bread to the tavern. Her mind isn’t on the bread.

_The smell of metal and leather and sword oil. Kissed him good-bye and he said he’d come back to her. What if he doesn’t? Does he know what he left behind? Will he ever know?_

“He left with love on his lips and in his heart, thinking of a question he wanted to ask when he returns. He’ll come back if he can,” I say, trying to help.

Her lips tremble, eyes swelling with sorrow. No. Those weren’t the right words. Too painful a possibility he won’t return.

“You’ll forget in a moment.”

She stares blankly, sees straight through me. She doesn’t remember. I can’t find the right words to help her.

“The songs are soothing,” I say. She nods and goes into the tavern to listen. It doesn’t heal the hurt, but it smooths the sharp away for a short time.

* * *

After two months, the last winter snows slip away and spring seeps in. Scattered seeds sprout on the garden ground. The sunlight warms them. They remember how to be flowers. The bloom in blue and red and yellow and green. It helps the bees remember how to be bees. They are happy with the flowers, the new colors in their garden.

“Do you like the gardens, Cole?” Solas asks.

“The bees are happier,” I say. He nods. He understands.

Solas is smooth and round, like the top of his head. He isn’t always. He’s sometimes sharp. Not sharp like Sera or Elan, not like an arrow or a scalpel. It’s a dull hurt, an old one. Always an aching knee on a rainy day. He is always sharp when I try to help his pain, but then says he’s sorry. It’s his shadow. Always with him. The soft songs of old always seeping through and singing to him. He doesn’t know what it’s like to not ache.

I want to help him, but he says no. Always no. Maybe one day he will let me.

The bees can make honey now. The healers use honey and herbs for their poultices. There’s enough leftover for the kitchen to use. The kitchen maid makes honey cakes to sell and to satisfy the sweets she craves now.

Jason is back in the gardens, but he doesn’t throw rocks anymore. He waits around, wanting Elan to ask him to send a message if there’s a copper in it. Coppers buy honey cakes from the kitchen. Honey cakes make him happy.

Shella picks flowers to put in her hair, humming hopefully. _Will Jim notice her again? He liked the flowers last time_.

The bees don’t mind. There’s more than enough flowers for them and for her.

Skyhold is brighter, more buzzing.

And I helped.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://laelior.tumblr.com/) thing now.


End file.
